family

23

We may not have a human child (and we probably won’t for awhile, thanks for asking) but we do have a child of the dog-kind and that’s sort-of like having a kid.

Babies & Puppies may have comparable rolls.

Here are the similarities… feel free to argue with me (but you’re wrong):

Human babies eat everything off the floor. Dog babies do the same thing.

Human babies eat and poop all day. Dog babies also do that.

Human babies love to cuddle. Dog babies also love to cuddle.

Dog babies sleep in crates. Human babies sleep in cribs.

Dog babies are leash trained. Some human babies are also leash trained for places like Disneyland.

Dog babies have to be socialized. Human babies also need to be around other human babies.

I’d say the biggest difference is that one is a dog and one is a human.

OK, there are a lot of differences and I get it, dogs and babies should not be compared because, OMG they aren’t similar at all. BUT sometimes puppies carry some similarities to a baby’s behavior and patterns so…

Back to my point: J and I kind-of have a baby and we’re realizing that our dog-baby is good training for when we have a human-baby.

For example:

Boo hasn’t been the puppy that whines in the middle of the night. But sometimes she wakes up, or moves slightly and Rachel hears it immediately and checks on her to make sure everything is cool. Jason also wakes up to those things. LOL jk, Jason doesn’t hear any of that stuff. The moral of the story is: now we know that J is a much sounder sleeper than R, which will be good to know when we eventually decide to have a human-baby.

Sometimes puppies don’t do what they’re told and that’s frustrating. But you can only get so mad when you remember that they’re only 4 months old and this is probably the first time they’re experiencing this thing that you’re mad about. Jason is super patient. Rachel isn’t as patient, so Jason’s a good guy to have around (for the puppy’s sake… and our future children’s sake).

We have to remember to feed our dog and take her out to go to the bathroom and we also have to remember to spend time with her & find her a sitter if we’ll be gone overnight. These are all things we’ll have to do with a baby. We have to take our selfishness down a couple notches with a dog, and I’m only assuming like tons more with a baby. This is good practice.

We’re pretty good parents. We’ve only had Boo for 3 weeks and she’s already learned a bunch of tricks and she’s super smart and she’s awesome. And these things can only be attributed to how awesome we are. So you’re welcome Boo, and you’re also welcome future Kleist kids.